Resolution requirements and resolution problems in simulations of radiative feedback in dusty gas

Abstract

In recent years a number of authors have introduced methods to model the effects of radiation pressure feedback on flows of interstellar and intergalactic gas, and have posited that the forces exerted by stars' radiation output represents an important feedback mechanism capable of halting accretion and thereby regulating star formation. However, numerical simulations have reached widely varying conclusions about the effectiveness of this feedback. In this paper I show that much of the divergence in the literature is a result of failure to obey an important resolution criterion: whether radiation feedback is able to reverse an accretion flow is determined on scales comparable to the dust destruction radius, which is $\lesssim 1000$ AU even for the most luminous stellar sources. Simulations that fail to resolve this scale can produce unphysical results, in many cases leading to a dramatic overestimate of the effectiveness of radiation feedback. Most published simulations of radiation feedback on molecular cloud and galactic scales fail to satisfy this condition. I show how the problem can be circumvented by introducing a new subgrid model that explicitly accounts for momentum balance on unresolved scales, making it possible to simulate dusty accretion flows safely even at low resolution.